News
Sixteen ministries of education in Latin America and the Caribbean have been trained in the development of tests that will assess learning
Representatives from 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean participated in the "Item Construction" capacity-building workshop for national teams organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). This is a crucial step in the proper development of the Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (ERCE 2025), led by OREALC/UNESCO Santiago, through its Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE).
One of the fundamental commitments for the development of the regional assessment ERCE 2025 is the installation and strengthening of the technical capacities of the national teams participating in the study. For this reason, this workshop addressed the development of items (questions) for ERCE 2025 and the development of this type of instrument in large-scale tests.
In the region, the technical capacities for the development of items for this type of test are heterogeneous. Therefore, strengthening the knowledge of the national teams that will apply this assessment is of great importance. In this way, comparable results will be achieved from the data that will emanate from ERCE 2025.
During the technical workshop, the ministerial professionals worked in teams (Reading-Writing, Mathematics, and Science) and were trained to understand the quality criteria for the elaboration of items or multiple-choice items, as well as for those related to open-ended responses and their respective rubrics. They also learned about methodological options to reduce possible biases of the items when selecting them for the final test and recommendations to avoid them from their construction. Finally, they elaborated, reviewed, and reformulated items for each of the curricular areas that will be evaluated in the ERCE 2025 study, based on the specification tables.
Latin America meets again to talk about education and our great joint project, the LLECE Laboratory. We thank all the countries that attended the meeting. We also thank the Chilean Ministry of Education and the Quality Education Agency for making this possible.
The region, present
Testimonials from some representatives of Latin America
Colombia
Yuly MartÃnez, Manager of the Subdirectorate of Instrument Design at the Colombian Institute for the Evaluation of Education (ICFES), said, "This is an opportunity to enrich our knowledge, exchange ideas, and learn about experiences in other countries in terms of educational evaluation. It is an opportunity to grow as a region in terms of innovation and efforts to improve the quality of education."
She added, "It is essential that we meet to exchange experiences. The challenge is to compare ourselves and see how our country stands at the level of those that are more advanced. Overcoming the weaknesses detected at the regional and national levels is key to being able to move forward and overcome the obstacles we have in terms of educational measurement and evaluation."
Brasil
Débora Torquato de Almeida, from the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais AnÃsio Teixeira (INEP), pointed out that "this is a great opportunity to meet technicians from other countries to exchange information and build knowledge, and strengthen our educational systems. This way, we can appropriate the results and implement them in our educational policies. Brazil is a very large country, and we have a system of independent states. Our challenge is to get the information to the schools. The key thing is to think about how we are going to report the results of the evaluations in a language that principals and teachers understand and can use in their schools."
Paraguay
Lourdes Almirón, head of the Department of Measurement and Analysis of the Directorate of Curricular Learning Achievement Assessment at the National Institute for Educational Assessment (INEE), said that "From Paraguay, we are very grateful for this space because it builds us up. We value this space to share and collaborate with our colleagues from all over the region and to forge those collaborative ties that we often lack."
She added that "Paraguay, as a technical evaluation body, was born with LLECE. We are about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. Thanks to these spaces, we have the advice and support of our colleagues. The challenge is always first to find that timely State policy so that the teams that are formed are maintained over time. Unfortunately, this item is very difficult for us, and we hope to be able to improve after this instance."
